Bong Joon Ho Says Mark Ruffalo’s ‘Mickey 17’ Dictator Is Based on ‘All the Faces of the Bad Politicians We’ve Experienced’
Audiences will recognize Mark Ruffalo’s character in “Mickey 17” — a megalomaniac dictator in a dystopian future who, along with his loopy wife played by Toni Collette, is hell-bent on colonizing an ice planet populated by sentient creatures — as any of the familiar autocrats currently in global power. Kenneth Marshall, as he’s known, oversees a 3D cloning process wherein Robert Pattinon’s Mickey dies over and over while undertaking dangerous tasks needed to understand how life can be lived on this new planet, only to be regenerated again. Ruffalo plays Marshall with beaming-white veneers and a slightly affected accent that will no doubt bring to mind President Trump.
But ahead of the film’s Berlinale premiere on February 15, director Bong Joon Ho didn’t spell out exactly that he was modeling the character after Trump; he’s more an amalgamation of the many current faces of power.
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“Mark Ruffalo is a character who embodies the dictators of the past that we’ve experienced, and that’s how I came up with this character,” Bong said via translator. “He has, in a comical way, all the faces of the bad politicians that we’ve experienced. Of course, I had some people I took as a reference, such as bad Korean politicians but not actual politicians right now. It seems like you have certain politicians in modern times that you’re thinking of, but I made this character drawing inspiration from the past. As history always repeats itself, it might seem like I’m referring to someone in the present. Even if I make something thinking of an event in the past, it seems to cover current events as well. It felt very realistic.”
Bong, anticipating such a question, added, “This kind of reaction is a reaction that I am very thankful for. I want to make science fiction that is very human and unusual for the genre, science fiction in itself. Even the character Toni [Collette plays] is not a character that often appears in science-fiction films. We have many young people in this room as well, and I made this film thinking the situation in the film is one you could experience in your life.”
Bong was joined by his cast at the Berlinale, including Steven Yeun, Collette (who signed onto the film without even reading the script), Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, and Anamaria Vartolomei (breakout of 2021 Venice Golden Lion winner “Happening.”)
But beyond the film’s political allegory or parable of colonization, “Mickey 17” is also playful, broadly comedic sci-fi, based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel “Mickey7,” with Plan B Entertainment’s Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner brought to the “Parasite” Oscar winner and Warner Bros. Robert Pattinson plays multiple Mickeys, but in much of the film is onscreen in dual roles as Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, after a “multiples” discrepancy leaves two of them still alive. They both tangle over Nasha (Ackie), who is Mickey 17’s girlfriend aboard the ship that’s set out to colonize the ice planet, but she’s eventually turned on by (while hopped up on an opioid-like drug that’s become an epidemic on board the ship) the idea of sleeping with both of them.
“It’s not a threesome,” Bong said. “It’s the love between Mickey and Nasha, but Mickey has become two Mickeys, but nevertheless this is a love story, and I’ve never filmed a love story, a melodramatic film, and to be honest, I want to make films of all genres. It’s my life goal, although I am a bit scared of musicals… The love story is also related to the different strands of the film. You have many violent scenes and, like you said in the film, just like in reality, there are many political, many scary things, but in the end, Mickey is able to survive and that’s all thanks to the love he was [for] Naomi, for Nasha.”
“Mickey 17” opens on March 7.
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